• Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.

Using Excel in Ramdisk

yanke_zulu

New Member
Joined
Sep 22, 2012
Messages
4 (0.00/day)
i want to use ramdisk for huge excell files
do i need to have performance gain using such files n ramdisk?
or shoukd i need to install Ms Excel in Ramdisk to have perfornance gain?
 
Joined
Jul 21, 2008
Messages
5,174 (0.90/day)
System Name [Daily Driver]
Processor [Ryzen 7 5800X3D]
Motherboard [Asus TUF GAMING X570-PLUS]
Cooling [be quiet! Dark Rock Slim]
Memory [64GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3600MHz (16GBx4)]
Video Card(s) [PNY RTX 3070Ti XLR8]
Storage [1TB SN850 NVMe, 4TB 990 Pro NVMe, 2TB 870 EVO SSD, 2TB SA510 SSD]
Display(s) [2x 27" HP X27q at 1440p]
Case [Fractal Meshify-C]
Audio Device(s) [Steelseries Arctis Pro]
Power Supply [CORSAIR RMx 1000]
Mouse [Logitech G Pro Wireless]
Keyboard [Logitech G512 Carbon (GX-Brown)]
Software [Windows 11 64-Bit]
Why not just buy an ssd?
 

W1zzard

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
May 14, 2004
Messages
27,049 (3.71/day)
Processor Ryzen 7 5700X
Memory 48 GB
Video Card(s) RTX 4080
Storage 2x HDD RAID 1, 3x M.2 NVMe
Display(s) 30" 2560x1600 + 19" 1280x1024
Software Windows 10 64-bit
only way is to try.. grab one of the free ramdisk softwares out there.

if your excel files have so many entries that excel is slow then you should use a real database engine
 
Joined
Feb 12, 2006
Messages
2,318 (0.35/day)
System Name MONEY PIT
Processor i7-3770K @ 4800 1.20v batch #3231B415 Delided
Motherboard ASrock Z77 OC Formula w onboard waterblocks
Cooling Apogee HD, MCP655,rad MCR320-XP,Micro Rev2 res
Memory G,skill Trident X F3-2400C10D-16GTX
Video Card(s) EVGA GTX 980 Ti Classified with EK nickel/acetal waterblock installed
Storage 2x120gig Wildfire raid0 2x120gig VERTEX3 raid0
Display(s) 3/ Samsung2343bwx + 65in LG 4K
Case NZXT Phantom White w/red
Audio Device(s) ReCon3d fatal1ty pro, Logitech z906 THX
Power Supply corsair AX860i
Mouse Rat7
Software 64bit ++++ win 10

yanke_zulu

New Member
Joined
Sep 22, 2012
Messages
4 (0.00/day)
why i am gettong indirect answers guys,
how can i use excell file on ramdisk , do i need to onstall excell or not?
 

W1zzard

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
May 14, 2004
Messages
27,049 (3.71/day)
Processor Ryzen 7 5700X
Memory 48 GB
Video Card(s) RTX 4080
Storage 2x HDD RAID 1, 3x M.2 NVMe
Display(s) 30" 2560x1600 + 19" 1280x1024
Software Windows 10 64-bit
excel will load your whole xls file into memory and work with it in memory, so the ramdisk wont probably do anything.

if you install excel itself to ramdisk the program will just start faster
if you put your xls file on the ramdisk it will load the file faster but probably not work with it any faster.

you are using the 64-bit version of excel, right?
 
Last edited:

yanke_zulu

New Member
Joined
Sep 22, 2012
Messages
4 (0.00/day)
yes, i am using 64 bit excell

using excell file on ramdisc should have some difference, i would open excell file faster because of reading speed,
changing the file also takes so much time, so i assume writing speed would decrease such time

is there ant temp file does excell use for calculations?
 

Kreij

Senior Monkey Moderator
Joined
Feb 6, 2007
Messages
13,817 (2.20/day)
Location
Cheeseland (Wisconsin, USA)
Hi Yanke, and welcome to TPU :toast:

RAM is volatile, which means when you start your computer the image of the RAMdisk will have to be reloaded from the HDD. Once it is loaded, though, access will be much faster.

Putting the application itself in a RAMDisk is not going to buy you much. Once the OS loads the app from the HDD it's in RAM anyway. The same is true for the xls files.
You will get better loading times and also write times, but eventually you will have to write the data back to a non-volatile store so you don't lose it when power is shut off.

There are 3rd party, non-volitale cards that will retain what's in their RAM, but they are usually much more expensive than a comparible SSD.

As for calculations, the processor is reading (and writing) everything from RAM already, so a RAMDisk will not help you there as it's using it's working set in RAM and not the RAMDisk. If the file(s) are so large that the OS generates page faults (needs the pagefile) it's going to be using the HDD anyway. The only real way to speed up the calculations is to get a faster processor (or if the application is optimized for multi-core/threading a proc with more cores) or faster RAM (I doubt you would notice a difference with faster RAM as even standard RAM is blazing fast compared to all the other peripherals).

Your best option, as stated before, is to get an SSD. I don't think that an interim/temporary solution is going to be worth the effort.

Just my opinions. :)
 

sbalhara

New Member
Joined
Oct 22, 2014
Messages
1 (0.00/day)
As my 2c, Storing an excel file in RAM disk was consistently faster for me versus hard disk
 

AsRock

TPU addict
Joined
Jun 23, 2007
Messages
18,875 (3.07/day)
Location
UK\USA
Processor AMD 3900X \ AMD 7700X
Motherboard ASRock AM4 X570 Pro 4 \ ASUS X670Xe TUF
Cooling D15
Memory Patriot 2x16GB PVS432G320C6K \ G.Skill Flare X5 F5-6000J3238F 2x16GB
Video Card(s) eVga GTX1060 SSC \ XFX RX 6950XT RX-695XATBD9
Storage Sammy 860, MX500, Sabrent Rocket 4 Sammy Evo 980 \ 1xSabrent Rocket 4+, Sammy 2x990 Pro
Display(s) Samsung 1080P \ LG 43UN700
Case Fractal Design Pop Air 2x140mm fans from Torrent \ Fractal Design Torrent 2 SilverStone FHP141x2
Audio Device(s) Yamaha RX-V677 \ Yamaha CX-830+Yamaha MX-630 Infinity RS4000\Paradigm P Studio 20, Blue Yeti
Power Supply Seasonic Prime TX-750 \ Corsair RM1000X Shift
Mouse Steelseries Sensei wireless \ Steelseries Sensei wireless
Keyboard Logitech K120 \ Wooting Two HE
Benchmark Scores Meh benchmarks.
If only more things could rise from the dead ( no pun intended ).
 
Top